Personal Blogs

From E-Learning V

Fig.1 Learn How to Study .... I did!

Buying books can be an obsession. Unnecessary too where I have access to a university library up the road, but I do anyway. Books that are long out of print 100, 75 years old. I like chasing down the obscure reference. When I finally read the passage an author, usually an academic has written, I do that thing politicians say about 'quoting out of context'. It is surprising how one's own interpretation of what someone has said can be very different. 

I understand that having read a book we keep them as an aide memoire, not even to thumb through, but to see them on the shelf and so be reminded of the joy we got from them. Do I ever get from that an academic text? Not often. I take copious notes as I read them. I now have a photo of the cover and that is in my Google+ gallery.

From E-Learning V

 

What more do I need?

Courtesy of a specialist local books shop, AbeBooks, Amazon and eBay I'm selling everything. A box of 30 books went to someone studying the MA in History I've been doing. This morning I dropped off four books at the Post Office. Having never used any online service to sell anything I am delighted at how easy it has been to turn the dining room table into a bookshop! Much to my wife's despair there are ten large 'really useful boxes' stacked around the place. ISBN number, get what its selling for, add a handful of photos, post an honest appraisal of the books condition - mostly pristine, one or two I took ownership of with a highlighter pen - not that that has prevented a sale. The content is sound. I'm honest about the things condition.

From E-Learning V

Fig. 2. Learn How to Study - with books!

The oddest thing is to find that sometimes a ten or twenty year old academic paperback sells for more than it cost all those years ago. For example, which says something for the OU, Derek Rowntree's 'Learn How to Study' from 1990. This may not mention online learning, and adds a very short chapter at the end on wordprocessing, but the lessons and tips he passes on are as relevant and as sound to a student planning distance learning as ever it was.

No value in an eBook on a Kindle then?

I was in a ListServ group in 2001 that worked, probably for the novelty factor. A decade later and on my fourth module in 22 months I expect all forums to work, most of the time.

What matters?

Plan for success. The learning design, the planning is crucial. There need to be certain cues, milestones, obligations and opportunities.

Have the right tutor. Training and experience is one thing, personality is another. As in real life they must have the educator's desire to support the right environment, whoever turns up and however it pans out.

Be a team player and whether you are completely new to this or an old hand, play your part.

Clock in regularly, and let people know you are around if only to say 'hi' - especially when you have nothing to say - say so! Tip: no one else can tell if you are or have been present.

Give it a go. Be prepared to make mistakes. Ask a fellow student, the responses you get here are always spot on.

Make friends.

(do a touch typing course! This is talking with your fingertips).

Use email, Skype and Google+ too.

Have a 'water -cooler' to chat in your tutor group away from the cut and thrust of course materials.

Google+ Hang-out  

Three fellow MAODErs and I spent over an hour 'hanging out' - technical term in Google+

Once you have the software loaded it was extraordinarily intuitive.

You speak and your image takes the main frame.

Easy to share docs or type messages. (or was it guys?)

Without a moderator it wad more like very old friends in a bar abroad, except that one person was sitting on a bed, chatting with hubby alongside, eating yoghurt and behaving as if we were all perched on the end of the bed or doing our teeth in the bathroom.

Like nothing else you are bringing people into your home.

I became immediately consciousness of needing a shave.

I had expected to have some choice over whether to appear in vision or not.

At least I wasn't in the bath, though people did wander off to the bathroom or to make a coffee/answer the phone, as you would do if chilled out in your own home. Weird to feel so drawn into the context of each person's 'learning' space. A cat jumped on this bed and I started a chain reaction whereby we all reached out and through the frames to stroke it - the worked too.

We talked shop, a TMA due on Monday, held up charts to the screen etc: no thought of needing a headset or separate webcam, more a case of adjusting the lighting and seating arrangements.

Will this change expectations of students who use Google+ when it comes to online tutorials?

Yes, this was like being in the room with each of these people. We have of course never met in person before but were behaving like siblings at a second cousin's wedding.

 

For the umpteenth time I am starting on a new venture on a new platform.

A decade ago I stuck to what I knew and wouldn't budge. I waved good-bye to contacts as I continued to blog in Diaryland while everyone else moved over to LiveJournal, Blogger and Wordpress. I even stuck with Friends Reunited and MySpace.

No more.

Everything I stumble upon I try.

Anything new I sign up.

Already I can imagine Google+ as a one-stop shop, a kind of Personal Learning Environment (PLE) even like the OU VLE in that is draws together so many of the services and tools I already use.

Managing and engaging with people according to their 'sphere of influence' rings true too. I've never felt comfortable with my several selves in Facebook.

Picasa I swear by for photos and screen grabs. The galleries here feed images into all my blogs.

I use but need to master dropbox.

I have a blogger blog, but I have become so engrossed in Wordpress I am truly reluctant to have to master another 'instrument' as it were.

It is not my desire to play every instrument in the orchestra, the wind section with a bit of piano and guitar for recreational purposes will do.

Conductor?

That's an interesting thought. But does Social Media have the equivalent of a score? I am not and never will be a programmer.